SEGA Tunes: Get moving with Virtua Fighter’s pumping soundtrack

Virtua Fighter was a ground breaking game for its time and was going up against some of the biggest fighting games made in that era. SEGA needed the whole game to be excellent and in my opinion they got a great complementary soundtrack to go with the revolutionary gameplay.

The first theme we are looking at is Akira’s Theme, this one is more up beat than they would later use. This one doesn’t seem like a theme for a character usually shown meditating and honing his martial arts skills. This is just a good action track, that gets the blood flowing. Its what I would love to hear when I’m in a middle of a fight and any move I make can win or lose the match. Great track, but as Akira’s theme, probably not. Seems the developers agreed as they would give him a more epic tune in Virtua Fighter 2.

I can’t do a post about Virtua Fighter‘s music without mentioning Sarah’s theme. I already wrote about her Virtua Fighter 2 theme song on a past Tuesday Tunes, so let’s talk about her original Virtua Fighter theme. To me this track feels like it wants the player to continue to feel ‘pumped’ but adding a layer of glamour. Its a hard to discribe track, also it uses the weird scream samples in the background. Overall a weird theme and I think they totally improved on Sarah’s theme in the sequel.

Pai’s theme goes straight up Chinese and makes me wonder if the game is a little bit racist or is it just what Chinese music sounds like?. Maybe I’m racist. God I hope not, Anyway the track also has those strange voice samples in the background that Sarah had, actually seems like a running theme on the first game’s soundtrack. Can we please give Pai’s Theme a round of applause for having a badass flute solo?

Now let’s look at Kage, aka Mr. Ninja badass’s theme song. Right away the track has a Japanese mysterious feel, definitely a sound taken directly from SEGA-AM3’s Shinobi series and in my opinion that’s a compliment. This track in my opinion does a great job capturing the badassness of not only being a ninja but being Kage.

So now that we shared some Virtua Fighter tracks, what are some of yours. We are talking about the first game!

Virtua Fighter Remix was the first game I purchased and loaded up on my SEGA Saturn. It was the first time I heard CD-quality, video game music through my TV speakers. I had played some CD-ROM games on a friend’s computer before, but had never heard game music like this in the comfort of my basement. All of these tracks blew my 15-year-old mind, and later the Panzer Dragoon soundtrack (from the included demo) pretty much made me melt into my chair like a heroin user (I assume).

Just gotta say, those aren’t weird scream samples in the background of Sarah’s theme. They’re blowing wind sound effects, which make sense because her stage is on the rooftop of a rather tall building.